The
Nicholson essay explores the explanation for Christian Zionism, locating it in
eschatology for some Christians while in God’s eternal covenant with Israel for
others. Mr. Nicholson argues that many evangelicals feel not only a strong
sense of protectiveness toward the State of Israel but a deep cultural affinity
with the Jewish people. But he also highlights the growing strength among
evangelicals of what he calls a “new anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian
movement.”

The
latter is something I can testify to first-hand. Several years ago my wife and
I left a Washington D.C. church we were members of over what I came to discover
was a deep, though previously hidden-from-view, hostility to Israel. The more I
probed the matter, the more disturbing it was, to the point that I didn’t feel
we could continue to worship there in good conscience. So we left, despite two
of our children having been baptized there and despite having developed strong
attachments to the church and many of its congregants over the years.

Mr.
Nicholson does an excellent job explaining the rise of pro-Palestinian
sentiment among some segments of American evangelicalism. The basis for this
movement rests in part on the belief that Israel is a nation whose very
founding in 1947 was illegitimate and immoral; since then, it is said, Israel
has become an enemy of justice and peace. Authentic Christianity therefore
requires one to embrace the pro-Palestinian narrative, or so this line of
argument goes. “The bottom line is simply this,” writes Nicholson. “More and
more evangelicals are being educated to accept the pro-Palestinian narrative –
on the basis of their Christian faith.”

As for
my own attitudes toward the Jewish state, I find myself closely aligned to the
view of Nuechterlein. “In the present instance,” he writes, “one need not
depend on biblical prophecy or covenantal theology to find reasons to support
the state of Israel.”

Israel
has the only truly democratic political culture in the Middle East. It is a
friend of the West in politics and political economy, and, more important, a
consistent and unswerving ally of the United States. It is a regional bulwark
against the radical Islamists who are its and America’s sworn enemies. The more
I see of the populist Arab spring, the stronger is my commitment to Israel. I
support Israel not because I am a Christian—though nothing in my Christian
beliefs would preclude that support—but because that support coincides with the
requirements of justice and the defense of the American national interest.

That
strikes me as quite right. In a region filled with despots and massive
violations of human rights, Israel is the great, shining exception. Indeed,
based on the evidence all around us, it is clear that Israel, more than any
nation on earth, is held not simply to a double standard but to an impossible
standard. Its own sacrifices for peace, which exceed those of any other country,
are constantly overlooked even as the brutal acts of its enemies are excused.
(I offer a very brief historical account of things here.)

Israel
is far from perfect—but it is, in the totality of its acts, among the most
estimable and impressive nations in human history. Its achievements and moral
accomplishments are staggering—which is why, in my judgment, evangelical
Christians should keep faith with the Jewish state. Set aside for now one’s
view about the end times and God’s covenantal relationship with Israel. Israel
warrants support based on the here and now; on what it stands for and what it
stands against and what its enemies stand for and against; and for reasons of
simple justice. What is required to counteract the anti-Israel narrative and
propaganda campaign is a large-scale effort at education, not simply with dry
facts but in a manner that tells a remarkable and moving story. That captures
the moral imagination of evangelicals, most especially young evangelicals.

I’m
sure some evangelical Christians would appreciate it if more American Jews
showed more gratitude toward them for their support of Israel over the years.
But frankly that matters very little to me, and here’s why: What ought to
decide where one falls in this debate on Israel are not the shadows but the
sunlight. On seeing history for what it is rather than committing a gross
disfigurement of it. And on aligning one’s views, as best as one can, with
truth and facts, starting with this one: The problem isn’t with Israel’s
unwillingness to negotiate or even any dispute over territory (Israel has
repeatedly proved it is willing to part with land for real peace); it is with
the Palestinians’ unwillingness to make their own inner peace with the
existence of a Jewish state.

The
suffering the Palestinian people (including Palestinian Christians) are
enduring is real and ought to move one’s heart. Many Palestinians suffer from
circumstances they didn’t create. And so sympathy for their plight is natural.
But these circumstances they suffer under are fundamentally a creation not of
Israel but of failed Palestinian leadership, which has so often been
characterized by corruption and malevolence. Checkpoints and walls exist for a
reason, as a response to Palestinian aggressions. Nor has anyone yet emerged
among the Palestinian leadership who is either willing or able to alter a civic
culture that foments an abhorrence of Jews and longs for the eradication of
Israel. That is the sine qua non for
progress.

To my
coreligionists I would simply point out an unpleasant truth: hatred for Israel
is a burning fire throughout the world. Those of the Christian faith ought to
be working to douse the flames rather than to intensify them.

The Palestinian Ideology Ignores Reality. By Michael Curtis. American Thinker, October 27, 2013.Curtis:Among
ideology, a fundamental belief system, and recognition of reality, there has
always been a huge intellectual gap.History is full of instances when all too many people have refused to
recognize the disastrous consequences of adhering to an ideology, usually based
on myth, regardless of a reality that contradicts their firm beliefs.The key problem is that individuals espousing
some ideological point of view may have invested so much emotional attachment
to it that they not only abandon objectivity, but also are incapable of
renouncing a viewpoint, a myth, or a false political religion that has been
discredited or may be irrelevant.They
do not want to disavow the part of themselves that has accepted falsity.

This is
now true of the ideological believers in the Palestinian narrative of
victimhood.Almost everyone recognizes
the mistakes of “true believers” in refusing to admit the horrors of the Stalinist
era in the Soviet Union and the Mao Zedong years in China.Supporters of and apologists for those
regimes persisted in ignoring the reality that they were totalitarian, savagely
cruel, responsible for systematic terror, and engaged in the slaughter of tens
of millions of their innocent citizens held to be enemies.

Adherence
to the ideology of Communism meant both condoning the horrors and cruelty as
inevitable and refusing to accept any possible compromise or qualification of
that ideology. Nor could adherents
accept that this ideological view, though partly rational, was largely a myth,
albeit one capable of mobilizing people.

Today,
that mixture of reason and myth is present in a Palestinian ideology of
victimhood, an ideology that seeks to mobilize political support by insistence
that Palestinians are being persecuted by Israel, a state that must be
rejected.Supporters of the Palestinian
cause can argue as part of that ideology for Israeli withdrawal from disputed
or occupied territory captured in 1967, for the establishment of a Palestinian
state, and for a solution to the Palestinian refugee question by a Palestinian
right of return.

But the
ideology departs from objectivity in referring to Israel as a colonial power
from which Palestinians must be liberated.That power is said to oppress Palestinians and to engage in terror
against them.The reality is that it is
Palestinian terrorism that has accounted for the murder of more than 1,500
Israelis over the last twenty years.

The
ideologists may raise legitimate points about the settlements built since 1967
in the West Bank.Yet it serves no
purpose to argue that these settlements are the main obstacle to peace
negotiations.Nor is it reasonable to
argue that Israeli policy has been unchanging and inflexible, that it is
unremittingly oppressive, and that it is based on the argument that “Between
the sea and the Jordan River there will be only Israeli sovereignty.”It is true that this argument was made by a
relatively small group among the Likud party in 1977.But it is not the policy of Israeli
governments, as has been shown by the various offers of a compromise solution
on territory shown by Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2000, and by Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert in 2008.

The
Palestinian ideology has formulated the concept of Nakba, catastrophe, resulting from the Arab defeat in their war against
Israel in 1948-49.Left unsaid is the
crucial reality that it was Arab armies that had invaded Israel on its creation
and caused the catastrophe.The
Palestinian state, because of Arab refusal, never came into existence 66 years
ago, as proposed by the UNGA resolution of November 1947, but the refugee
problem did.Moreover, it was the threat
reiterated by President Nasser among others to eliminate the Jewish State of
Israel and his actions producing a casus
belli that led to the 1967 war and the capture of Arab territory – the now
disputed West Bank and East Jerusalem.It was this threat and consequent actions that have prevented a
Palestinian state from being established.

The
Palestinian ideology and activists on behalf of that ideology or apologists for
Palestinian terrorism refuse to recognize benefits that arise from employment
of Palestinians by Israeli enterprises.Rather, they insist on the self-defeating policy of boycott, divestment,
and sanctions in so many areas of life against Israel.Or they maintain the image of Israeli/Jewish
conspiracy eager to rule over an oppressed people.

Even
more, the ideologists refuse to recognize both the security problem of Israel
and the reality of the continuing attacks by Hamas from Gaza and Hezb’allah
from Lebanon on Israeli civilians.Rather, they concentrate on a number of issues: an uncompromising view
of territory in the area; a solution of the refugee problem that would
eliminate the Jewish State of Israel; the insistence on Jerusalem as a capital
of any Palestinian state; and anti-imperialism, which means hostility towards
the United States as well as Israel.Hatred and venom are more noticeable in these arguments than are
overtures of conciliation.

No
conciliation is likely if the starting premise of Palestinian ideology is
insistence on a state that must consist of the whole area of Palestine as
defined in the British Mandate, thus eliminating the existing State of
Israel.Equally, the Palestinian refugee
problem remains unresolved if Palestinians, and previously other Arabs who also
used it as a propaganda device, persist in holding that all refugees, and now
their descendants including grandchildren, have the right to return to places
where they lived before the war in 1948, and most of which no longer
exist.The demographic impact of this
would clearly mean the end of the Jewish State of Israel.

The
issue of the future of Jerusalem is also related to the fallacious Palestinian
ideological narrative of victimhood.This asserts that Jews have no historic right to any area of Mandated
Palestine, since they lived there for only a short time, if at all.This assertion means there is no connection
between Jews and their ancient homeland and their historic holy places.Rather, the ideology identifies “Palestinians”
with the Canaanites of several thousand years ago and asserts that because
there have been Islamist conquests of the area since the 7th century, they are
another Islamic group having a right to the land.In this absurd distortion of history, Israel
has no legal right to Jerusalem or anywhere else in Palestine.

The
Palestinian ideology has incorporated what is now the politically correct
mantra of opposition to colonialism and imperialism.Not only is Palestinian self-determination an
end in itself, but it also implies the end of Israeli colonization.An ideology of this kind can hardly be the
basis of peace negotiations when it, above all in the version of Hamas and
other radical Islamists, calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.Nor can it be useful if Palestinians insist
on preconditions or concessions by Israel before any negotiations start.

If
Berlin and Vienna are trying, with considerable success, to come to terms with
their infamous past of Nazism, why can’t Palestinians do the same in
recognition of the Jewish past in Palestine?That recognition is not near at hand.Instead, Hamas’s answer is building a very large, well-constructed, and
sophisticated tunnel from Khan Younis in the south part of the Gaza Strip into
Israel in order to attack civilians in Israeli border towns and villages.Hamas, the Islamist expression of Palestinian
ideology, prefers to waste resources of its subjects and to invest in terror,
not peace.